Space Access Society

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Space Access Society logo, courtesy of the Space Access Society

The Space Access Society (sometimes abbreviated SAS) is an organization dedicated to increasing the viability and reducing the cost of commercial access to space travel.

It was founded by Henry Vanderbilt, who was the president from the organizations' founding in 1992 until January 2006.

[edit] Activities

The SAS was primarily noted for two activities:

Space policy activity and review reports, known as 'SAS updates', which were emailed and web posted at irregular intervals. These included both factual current events and policy analysis, and were largely or entirely written by Henry Vanderbilt.
Space Access conferences, held in the spring in Phoenix, Arizona, since 1994. There was also a Making Orbit conference held in Berkeley, California in 1992.

The Space Access conferences are well known in the reusable space launch development community and space launch vehicle communities for bringing together key players at most of the companies working in the field, ranging from large conventional aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, and smaller companies such as Rotary Rocket, XCOR Aerospace, Pioneer Rocketplane, Armadillo Aerospace and the like. NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration Office of Commercial Space Transportation also have consistently sent representatives. Many Ansari X-Prize team members were consistent attendees.

Presentations at the conference range from informal to viewgraphs and paper handouts. There is no conference proceedings, to encourage the free discussion of issues which participants may not want to go on documented record. Social networking among the industry leaders present was a major feature of the conferences as well.